


the light that follows at her heels

by saltedpin



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: 4+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-typical Issues, Chocolate Box Exchange Round 6 treat, F/F, dubious consent due to identity and/or possession issues, not John Justice Wheeler compliant, not season three compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:35:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29397753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltedpin/pseuds/saltedpin
Summary: Different Audreys, different Lauras.
Relationships: Audrey Horne/Laura Palmer
Comments: 9
Kudos: 14
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	the light that follows at her heels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



> Heya! I was really intrigued by your prompt of alternate Audreys encountering alternate Lauras in different times and places - I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for writing such a neat and interesting set of prompts! :)
> 
> Title is adapted from a translated lyric from [Shiki no Uta by Minmi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQbcyOxqDFw). The story makes verrrry slight use of some unrevised shooting scripts.
> 
> Thank you so much to Apathy and rabbit_habits for all their help and beta-ing! All mistakes are mine.

**1.**  
Audrey’s lost track of the different kinds of convents her father has threatened to pack her off to – Bulgarian, Portuguese, East German – and the kinds of manual labour she’ll be doing once she gets there – scrubbing the floors, re-tiling the roofs, boiling eggs for orphans. It’s just something he says, in the same way that stickyfingering items from the sample packs cosmetic companies send him and playing music in the hall at four a.m. are just things she does. 

That, at least, is something they understand about each other. Audrey likes to think he respects her stubborn nature – in that, at least, she _is_ her father’s daughter.

But it’s cold comfort on mornings like these. She’d been late to school and is making herself later still by standing at her locker changing into her red kitten heels and smoking a cigarette she doesn’t even want, long after the hallway has emptied out of everyone except for a few stragglers, Audrey and her cigarette, and Laura Palmer, who for some reason is still fiddling with the combination of her locker, as if she can’t quite remember what it should be. Audrey ignores her, smoking her cigarette and gazing at the flickering fluorescent light on the ceiling – anything not to notice the way Laura’s fingers shake when she finally gets her locker open and then stands dully in front of it as if she can’t remember why she’s here. 

“Oh – Audrey –”

Audrey’s head whips around at the sound of her name – she stubs out her cigarette, but it’s only mousy little Janet Duplain, peeping at her from over the top of her English textbooks, brown eyes wide and plaintive. 

“I wanted to ask you,” she begins to say. “I mean, I wondered if I could borrow –” 

She trails off as she notices Laura standing there, and her eyes grow wider still; she abandons whatever she’d been going to say to lean in, teeth worrying at the dry skin of her lower lip.

“Audrey,” Janet whispers, “do you think Laura would tutor me in English if I asked? I’m failing so bad, and I heard she already tutors Josie Packard, and she helps your brother too, right? Do you think if I asked, she’d do it? Do you think if you asked _for_ me – I mean, she’s so nice and everything –”

“Ask her yourself, since she’s such a living saint,” Audrey snaps, shoving aside her textbooks, looking for her compact mirror. She’s probably messed up her lipstick with her cigarette. “Laura Palmer, Laura Palmer, Laura Palmer. I’m sick to death of hearing about God’s gift to Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer.” 

“Audrey,” Janet whispers in a low, horrified hiss. 

“Goody two shoes Laura Palmer.” Audrey finally finds her compact, flicking it open with the nail of her thumb. In the corner of her eye, she sees Laura looking over, but Audrey evades her gaze and goes on, louder, in between applying her lipstick with a slow, deliberate hand, “God, if I were _that_ boring… well, I’d simply die.”

Audrey bites her lips around a tissue and snaps her compact shut, stuffing it back in her locker. Janet looks down, eyes darting nervously to where Laura is still calmly and slowly taking her books from her locker.

“I suppose you’re right, Audrey,” Laura says a half-second later, turning to face her. Audrey half-turns her head, rolling her eyes, careful not to let them catch Laura’s steady, unwavering gaze. “I guess you’ll never know just how much I wish I was just like you.” 

**2.**  
The day she’d packed her bags and gotten out hadn’t been a very special day; even now, Audrey isn’t quite sure what had made her think _That’s it_ and leave. 

Her mother and Johnny had left the year before for her aunt’s place in Seattle, so she doesn’t have to feel guilty about leaving them behind. There’d been no drama of any kind – she’d simply put her bags into the trunk of her car and driven south until she’d hit San Francisco, with a few small pitstops along the way.

At the least, her experience working in her father’s hotel has gotten her foot in the door in job interviews; her native charm has done the rest. She doesn’t even mind that she’s had to start over again from the bottom. At some point, Audrey thinks she’ll continue on south, down to Los Angeles to see what Hollywood has to offer a girl like her – but for the moment she’s here, working in a hotel lobby, the same place she might have been had she stayed in Twin Peaks, albeit in a bigger, shinier, more expensive hotel than the Great Northern. She’s stopped here longer than she intended to, but it’s kind of a comfort to do something so familiar now that the ache of loneliness has replaced the thrill of excitement at being on her own in an unknown place. Sometimes in the off-season when it’s not busy, she daydreams of that tall, dark stranger she used to dream of – in this case a cold, canny businessman who’s forgotten how to live – who’d see her here behind the desk, feel his heart warm for the first time since his childhood when she smiles at him, who’d lie awake in his hotel bed unable to sleep for pining for her, until, unable to stand it any longer, he’d rush downstairs, his impeccable suit rumpled, tie askew, only to be told that her shift has ended and she’s nowhere to be found, so his urgent declaration will have to wait until morning. 

Audrey taps the end of her pen against the papers in front of her, waiting for the phone to ring – at least that would give her something to do.

She looks up at the sound of a torrent of laughter from the doorway; some girl with blonde hair and a short skirt is pretending to fall over in her strappy heels as an excuse to grab onto the arm of the older – much older – man by her side, her hand slipping inside his jacket, cheek pressed against his shoulder. Audrey looks down, lips twisting, but by the time they reach the desk, she’s schooled her features into calm neutrality – it’s hardly the first time some entrepreneur has brought his bit on the side on a business trip with him. If she had a dime… well, she supposes the hotel _does_ get paid every time it happens. _And yet, here I still am._

As the man fills out the check-in form, Audrey studies the girl from beneath her lashes; to her surprise, she realises that beneath the makeup, she’s probably about the same age as Audrey herself. _She could be me,_ Audrey thinks with a sudden stab of furious envy – that could be her, with a real fur coat that she definitely didn’t have to pay for draped over her shoulders, her hair done up, getting flown all over the place by rich men falling over themselves to pay for her company. 

She looks away, anger curdling like bile in her throat, but in the end her eyes are drawn back to the woman. With the man’s greying head lowered over the form, she’s turned to look away, and, with a discreet flick of her eyes, Audrey follows her gaze, realising she’s looking at herself reflected in the tall glass doors of the foyer. But it’s not with the kind of preening self-regard that Audrey would have expected from a woman like her – she barely looks like the same woman at all. The smiling, girlish coquette she had been a moment before is gone, and the woman in the reflection is tired, sad, and pale, a hollowed-out version of herself, red lips pressed into a thin line, blue eyes as hard as flint. It’s a shock that feels almost like a slap across the face, leaving Audrey feeling stunned. Her head feels light, and for a moment she feels as if she’s falling, as if she’s suddenly been unmoored and left to drift away from herself. 

It’s only a moment, though, and in the next, the woman’s laugh pulls Audrey back to herself again. The man, having finished his check-in form, has turned back to his companion, patting and pinching her cheek while she pouts and giggles and tells him _no, no, no, stop, stop, please, stop_.

Audrey watches them as they go. For a moment, she thinks the woman looks back over her shoulder at her… but perhaps it was only to check that the bellboy was coming after them with the luggage, after all. 

**3.**  
Audrey steps from her car and into the chill of the evening air, her breath leaving her lips as a dense white fog. Ordinarily, she might have stayed in and watched the evening re-run of _Invitation to Love_ , but tonight, the walls of the hotel she’d inherited had seemed too enfolding, too suffocating for her to stand being there a moment longer. She spends most of her time there, after all, since it turns out it’s more difficult to turn a profit when she’s trying to raise an honest business out of the tangled web of lies her father had left behind. She’s sold off Horne’s Department Store – let someone else sort _that_ mess out, and besides, she doesn’t need the associations – but still, somehow, she can’t seem to find her way out of the morass of debts and frauds and swindles her family had been built on. 

She’s so tired of it. And so, here she is. 

Audrey makes her way across the parking lot, heels clicking on the wet asphalt. She passes the reflection of Bang Bang Bar’s endlessly looping neon flash caught in a puddle, lurid and bright red, like a jagged wound carved into the sidewalk. It had rained all morning and then all afternoon, but it’s lightened now into a soft, hazy drizzle that settles damply on her coat and skin. She catches sight of herself in the window as she passes it and takes a moment to turn her head first this way and then that. She’s done her makeup differently tonight and smoothed her hair down, slick and close to her skull. She barely even recognises herself, so perhaps no one else will either – she hadn’t exactly been a regular here when she was in high school, and that had been years ago anyway. She’d always thought back then that her father had had her dropped and picked up from Twin Peaks High to show people what his money could buy – and of course that had been part of it – but it had also been, as she’d later learned, because her father had known all too well what kinds of trouble a little girl could fall into. 

The warmth that hits her when she opens the door is almost shocking in its intensity – someone takes her coat from her when Audrey passes through the entry way, but between the heat, the low light, and the music that’s as hazy as the rain outside, she barely even notices. The booths that line the walls are strangely empty, even for a weeknight. The way Audrey remembers people talking about this place, it seemed like all of Twin Peaks used to gather here every night of the week. She pauses, uncertain, before finally making her way to the bar. Perhaps she won’t feel so alone and so out of place if there’s a drink in her hand. 

It _does_ make her feel better, Audrey finds, as she sips whatever it is she ordered – _Surprise me,_ she’d told the bartender, dredging up some of the girl she used to be from where she has lain dormant inside her since the day her father died. Condensation beads on the glass, wetting the tips of her fingers, and she has to be careful not to let the drink slip from her grasp as she carries it to one of the ten empty tables that line the dancefloor.

She’s not sure what goal she had in mind when she came here. It had been impulsive. Until she’d been driving, she hadn’t even been sure where she was headed, but it had occurred to her at some point that a bar was the right place to find someone – anyone. Anyone as lonely as she is, anyone as hungry as she has become. But maybe she should have picked another night. The people turning lazily on the dancefloor all seem to have partnered up already, and the only occupied booth contains two boys who don’t look old enough to have been served the beers they’re necking. 

It’s a surprise, then, when someone pulls out the chair next to hers and sits down in it. Audrey turns, blinking, and perhaps she seems annoyed, because the woman now sitting next to her says, “Oh – I’m sorry. Were you waiting for somebody?” 

Audrey shakes her head, honesty coming to her faster than thoughts. “I – no. No, I’m here alone.”

“That’s a shame.” The woman leans over, resting her cheek on her palm. Audrey stares at her – in the continuous cycle of the flashing neon sign through the window she can’t make out the woman’s age or even the colour of her hair. Her eyes reflect the soft, golden glow of the ceiling lamps, and Audrey can’t tell what colour they might be either.

“Although it doesn’t have to be,” the woman says after a moment, before lifting her beer to her lips, her nails standing out darkly against the white of the label. 

“I’m sorry?” Audrey blinks, confused, trying to clear her head. It’s been a while since she drank, but she doesn’t remember being this much of a lightweight.

“A shame. It doesn’t have to be a shame.” The woman’s smile widens. “Does it?”

“Oh – I –” Audrey swallows, closing her eyes and then opening them again. She finds the smile she used to smile back when she’d been good at this, or at least good at pretending she was. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.” 

She wishes she could see more clearly what this woman looks like or even hear what she sounds like – she leans forward to whisper her name in Audrey’s ear, but Audrey doesn’t catch it over a sudden swell in the music from the stage. The singer’s voice is like smoke, seeming to wind its way into everything, and more than once Audrey finds herself nodding along with what the woman says without having heard a word. 

Audrey feels it though, of course, when she lays her hand down across Audrey’s own, her pale pink nails settling next to Audrey’s red ones. She looks down at them, something stirring in her memory of the way the woman’s nails had looked as she’d raised her bottle of beer, but then she finds herself drawn back to the liquid warmth of her eyes, half-lidded, long-lashed, the flash of the neon sign outside repeating itself over and over within their blue-grey depths.

It’s too easy – too easy to let herself be tugged to her feet by long, strangely cold fingers wrapped around her wrist. She never even finished her drink. 

It’s clear the woman knows this place – she leads Audrey out a side door, into the alley next to the bar. The sudden cold and the smell of wet pine, wet asphalt and wet garbage settle themselves on Audrey’s senses, at least until the moment the woman winds her hand around the back of her neck and draws her in. 

Audrey had often wondered, sometime in her childhood, what kissing must be like – when she’d tried it later, she had found herself unimpressed. It hadn’t been like what she’d been told: a heated crush of lips in the midst of a desperate blaze of unbearable passion. At best, it had been simply boring, and Audrey had found she preferred the daydreams of the dark, handsome stranger who she’d once imagined would rescue her from Twin Peaks. He hadn’t come and he would never come – and it had been too late by the time Audrey had realised the only person who was going to rescue her was herself. But in this moment, she honestly cannot remember why she’d ever wanted to leave in the first place. 

The woman’s lips are warm and soft as she presses Audrey back against the cold brick wall of the bar. Brief thoughts flit through her mind – _It’s raining – I don’t have my coat – we should go to my car –_ but she can’t hold them in her head as steady fingers slant her head back, splaying across the base of her skull. If all her other kisses had been like this one, Audrey’s sure she never would have _stopped_ kissing – it’s the kind of kiss drawn directly from her dreams of what it might have been like, all the years of her yearning, lonely childhood. 

Audrey doesn’t even know this woman – or does she? she thinks suddenly, as the woman pulls back, smiling, half-turning her head as if she’s moving in close to gaze at Audrey with only one of her eyes, like she’s peeping at her through a keyhole. It’s the colour of her eyes that sets a memory scrabbling against the inside of Audrey’s skull, calls to something lurking at the threshold of her mind. It’s there in the flash of her blue eyes and the shine of her teeth in the neon lights. Her hair has resolved itself into a golden blonde, pulled back from her face and piled up high on her head – 

_No,_ Audrey thinks. _No, I don’t want to think of her –_

She tries to push the memory away, the face she’d seen in the photograph every time she’d been sent to the principal’s office for smoking, for cutting class, for applying makeup during algebra. Laura Palmer, the homecoming queen, looking at her from behind the glass of the photo frame, her smile unspoilt and open but her eyes guarded and empty. 

“Hey. Don’t go wandering off now. Stay right here with me.” The woman’s voice is soft in her ear, and the path her thumb strokes down her neck to the hollow of her throat is indulgent, affectionate, at least until it’s followed by the sharp, sudden press of her nail. Audrey shudders as the woman’s hand presses up between her thighs, pushing her skirt up. It’s a shudder of surprise as much as genuine pleasure – surprise that such a light touch could send such a warm ripple of heat through her, squirming like a snake in her belly. As much as Audrey would like to twist away, she finds instead her face turning towards the heat of the woman’s mouth, wet and hungry, and very much alive. 

The woman’s hand skims upwards, thumb hooking into Audrey’s navel and twisting; the pressure finds some place inside her, far deeper than anyone could touch; it’s a dull, aching pleasure that makes her twist against the wall, her knees buckling, her skirt pulled up to her waist, as Laura’s – _no, not Laura’s_ – fingertips slide against the wetness between her thighs. 

“Audrey,” she breathes, softly, gently, and in the kiss that follows it, it’s very easy for Audrey to forget that she never told this woman her name. 

**4.**  
Once, when she’d been an agent trainee, Audrey’s dormitory roommate had asked her where she came from, and Audrey had shrugged and told her she came from nowhere – but the truth is Twin Peaks is often closer to the surface of her thoughts than she’d like to admit.

She thinks about it sometimes – the slate-grey roads after the rain and the mist rising between the trees; the smell of fresh pie at the Double R Diner and the gasoline stink of Big Ed’s; the way she could hear the slow, steady incessance of the waterfall from the open window of her bedroom in summer. She doesn’t miss any of it. She isn’t certain anyone would recognise her now that she’s Special Agent Horne, anyway. 

Considering that, she’s sometimes wondered why she dreams of it so often, and usually not even with the soft, hazy quality that’s so typical of dreams. Everything in Twin Peaks sits in her memories like she’d been there only yesterday, and she can still find her way through town as if nothing has changed. Her dreams aren’t lucid, exactly, but she’s also not quite powerless against them either, like a leaf caught in a river’s flow. Tonight, when she finds herself in Ghostwood Forest, she knows that it’s because, on some level, she directed herself there. Around her, the boughs of the fir bend in the wind, uncannily noiseless. Even her steps over the dead and fallen fir needles don’t make a sound as she approaches a half-circle of thin, white trees, their branches raised like arms to the sky – 

Audrey jerks awake, the taste of pine, damp earth, and stale blood filling her mouth. She lifts her head from the desk where she’d fallen asleep, her case notes stuck to her cheek until she pulls them off and lays them back down flat, a blotch of bright red lipstick smeared across the page. Audrey sighs. She knows she does this too often – she sits up late with her cigarettes and the black coffee she’s learned to love the taste of. She’d told Agent Bryson she wouldn’t do it anymore, but the case she’s working on sits too close to the bone for her to rest easy: two missing girls, a drug connection, and a possible sexual motive – and she’s no closer to a breakthrough than she was three days ago when she was assigned the case. 

Sighing, Audrey shuffles her case notes back into order – using them as a pillow isn’t exactly going to help her solve anything, so she stands up, grimacing at the pops and cracks that slowly make their way up her spine. If she’s going to sleep, she may as well do it on a horizontal surface. 

She’s asleep again as soon as her head sinks into the pillow, and it’s as if her dream was lingering, waiting for her to return to it. This time, however, she doesn’t know where she is, but she recognises the woman sitting across from her, dressed in black. 

It’s Laura – she knows it instantly, even though she’s clearly older. She’s the age she would be now had she lived, but Audrey had always thought Laura looked older than her years. When she looks down at her own hand, Audrey sees it’s lined and spotted with age, dark, yellowish stains blooming across the inside of her first and second fingers – perhaps she really ought to quit smoking. 

Laura seems to be looking at her expectantly, as if waiting for Audrey to ask her something, but Audrey isn’t sure what she should ask and decides to remain silent, waiting. Laura cocks her head, her polite, mannered smile still in place, and then, with a flutter of black fabric she stands. The diamond brooch she wears droops down towards Audrey’s face when she bends over her, the swoop of her long blonde hair coming to rest against her shoulder. Audrey tilts her head back as Laura’s fingers trail gently over her throat and parts her lips when Laura kisses her, a brief, tender touch, before she leans forward, her breath warm against the shell of Audrey’s ear as she whispers – 

Audrey wakes, a heartbeat filling her mouth, her mind clearer than it’s ever been. The dawn is creeping in through the window, and she struggles from her bed, scrabbling for her notebook, before the gift that Laura has given her can disappear with the morning light. 

**+1**  
She catches Laura before school – for once she’s running early. Homeroom doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes, and so once she’s finished at her locker, they go to the girls’ bathroom to smoke. 

Audrey doesn’t even like it, but she likes the way her fingers look around the cigarette and likes the way it makes her feel grown-up. She likes the way Laura dips her head to light her own from the tip of Audrey’s and the bright blue flash of her eye as she looks up at her from beneath her lashes, the smoke spooling from between her lips.

“You’re not even inhaling,” Laura informs her, as Audrey taps her ash into the white porcelain sink. 

“I know,” Audrey says defensively, and this time she pulls in a deep, heavy drag – by the time she finishes coughing, there are tears in her eyes and her chest hurts like she’s having a heart attack, and Laura is doubled over, laughing so hard she has her arms wrapped around her sides. 

“Oh my God, Audrey, if you hate smoking you can just tell me,” Laura says, putting a hand on her back as she leans over the sink. “My mom’s starting to ask questions about where hers are going anyway, so maybe we should just quit.”

Audrey shakes her head, dabbing at her eyes – her mascara’s running, _wonderful_ – and sniffling. “No, I’m fine –”

“I was thinking I was going to stop anyway,” Laura says, lifting her cigarette and contemplating it briefly before tossing it into the sink. “Who wants to spend their free time around a bunch of toilets?”

Audrey looks up at her, alarmed, but Laura is already smiling again, a smudge of pale pink lipstick just visible on her left front tooth. “I know you usually get driven to school, but if you get your driver to stop on the corner, I can meet you there and we can walk some of the way together. That’d be better, wouldn’t it? Now that James and Donna are hanging out, it kind of sucks to go with them. Talk about being a third wheel.”

Audrey laughs, mostly because she’s not quite sure what to say, but also at the idea of Laura being a third anything. She doesn’t really remember now how they got so close – last year they’d barely spoken, and Audrey had been stand-offish whenever Laura had tried to talk to her after she’d finished Johnny’s lessons. Slowly, she’d worn Audrey down, though – despite the fact she’d like to consider herself a cool customer, even Audrey’s not made of stone.

“Sure,” she says, when she realises she still hasn’t given Laura an answer, and then adds, “I’d really like that,” before anxious embarrassment wells up inside her and she turns away to face the mirror, taking a piece of paper towel and dabbing at her ruined mascara. To change the subject, she asks, “What do you have first period?” in as nonchalant a voice as she can manage, as if she doesn’t really care at all.

“Calc." Laura makes a face. "I hate it so much.” Looking at herself in the mirror, she pulls her hair over her shoulder, before leaning forward to wipe the lipstick off her tooth. 

“But you’re pretty good at it, aren’t you?” Audrey glances at her. “You won the prize last year, right?”

“Yeah.” Sighing, Laura tries her hair in an updo. “My dad says I should study accounting in college, but who cares about that? I’d rather do something… I don’t know… artistic. Something weird, like making statues out of bottle tops and bubble gum wrappers. You know? Something no one’s done before. Where’s the passion in accounting?”

“More money in accounting than bubble gum sculpture,” Audrey points out.

“Oh, who cares about that?” Laura turns to her with a smile, brilliant and sharp. “I don’t want to live like that. If I’m going to live, it has to be doing something I love. Maybe I won’t even stay in Twin Peaks. Who knows?”

Audrey stares at her, blinking, a strange, tight warmth kindling in her chest. “I sometimes think I’d like to leave too,” she says, though she’s not sure why. She’s never told anyone that before. The way her father talks – the way _everyone_ talks – it’s as if it’s already decided she’ll stay and help him run the hotel. 

“Well, we could go together.” Laura gives her another smile, as if she’s throwing out a suggestion as inconsequential as hanging out at the diner after school. “That’d be cool.”

The bell for homeroom rings, and Laura plucks up the remains of their soggy cigarettes from the sink, tossing them in the trash. “Come on, or we’ll be late.”

Audrey follows her to homeroom, where Mrs. Clarkson gives them the hairy eyeball, even though they’re only about thirty seconds late, her pursed lips suggesting they should hurry to their seats – but before she makes her way to her desk, Laura turns her head, squeezes Audrey’s arm and whispers, _I’ll see you after school._

Audrey can only nod. After she sits down, when Laura can’t see her face anymore, she bites her lower lip, her heart warm and her stomach tingling, and thinks about the future, suddenly, brilliantly opening before her: bright and hopeful, and hers for the taking.


End file.
